These five works for chamber orchestra by Ernst Krenek (1900–91) were written between 1931 and 1979 – both before and long after Krenek abandoned Hitler’s Austria for California. They demonstrate that serial music, in capable hands, does not have to abandon the virtues of more conservative idioms: the emotions embraced here range from translucent lyricism, via powerful dramatic utterance, to uneasy existentialist humour.

Reviews

...As a determined non-practitioner of systematic –isms, Krenek invariably spins surprises throughout the course of each of these works.

...There are excellent performances from both singers, and Agata Zubel is as acute in her perceptive reading of early Krenek as Hausmann is in the more stylistically variegated pleasures of the older composer. The recording in the Hall of Radio Wrocław is first class. Presiding over his soloists and the Leopoldinum Orchestra is a man best known as a violinist, Ernst Kovacic. He proves a splendid agent through which we can experience Krenek’s endlessly fertile and imaginative music.